Rare collaboration adds weight to BioShock Infinite

The genius and the novice Levine, Draper and Baker are still deep in the recording
process for BioShock Infinite, which 2K Games plans to release
sometime in 2012 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3
and PC.

The days of voice actors showing up and reading their lines off
a script are over, says videogame veteran Baker, whose major game
roles include Snow in Final Fantasy XIII and Two-Face in
the upcoming Batman: Arkham
City.

"The bar has been raised," Baker says. "Gamers expect a higher
performance. You've got games now … that are bringing in writers
[and] actual talent directors and they know they have to deliver a
dramatic and cinematic performance."

'Troy and I talk in very gamey-gamey terms.'

"I've never worked on something with such a dynamic creative
process," says Draper, whose TV credits include Ghost
Whisperer and CSI: Miami. "There isn't always a
willingness for someone to bring something new and have a director
or writer take that and rework it."

Levine calls Baker and Draper "the genius and the novice." While
both are veteran actors, Baker has performed in many games and
Draper in almost none. Levine sees these two extremes as a potent
mix.

"A lot of times, Troy and I will turn to each other and talk in
very gamey-gamey terms," Levine says. "The advantage of having
Courtney not having a ton of that is that she doesn't bring any
preconceptions about what a 'game performance' is."

At the PAX panel, Levine showed several videos taken during the
voiceover sessions for the BioShock Infinite demo. The
most striking moment showed Draper struggling to nail a key scene:
Elizabeth uses her unexplained power to open a massive "tear"
between two dimensions, placing the pair in mortal danger.

Having Baker in the studio proved to be the thing that did the
trick: Improvising some lines as Booker, the actor started
"berating" his partner to get her to the right emotional state.

"The moment that was most inspiring to me was where Troy was
shouting at Courtnee," Levine said. "And that was because Courtnee
and I both asked him to do that. He was very brave and
collaborative to do that.

"There was a moment where I was ready to stop the scene. [But]
these two as actors, because they were in the room with me, Troy
actually said, 'No no no, she's got it.' And that was an amazing
moment for me, because that was one actor understanding another
actor's process and I completely missed it. I was not seeing her
getting there.

"Troy as an actor understood that … she was right on that verge
of getting that. You can't get that happening unless you're
spending time together and you're building up trust together.
Usually in voice acting, you aren't even in the same room,"Levine
said.

It spoils us BioShock Infinite is an action game, so Levine knows he can't overload players with
storyline sequences.

"Once I've locked the player into place, I can't write a page of
dialogue," he says. "That's the challenge -- not so much writing
the lines, but the economy we have to work with." With only seconds
to spare before the player loses interest, Booker and Elizabeth
must pack a lot of emotion into small chunks of dialogue. This
presents a problem, Levine says, when one is trying to get voice
actors to truly emote.

"The reason [the tear] was such a hard scene is that in a movie,
you'd be able to write a lot of dialogue to get [an actor] to that
point," he says. "We don't have that fucking kind of time."

"Three lines," interjects Draper.

With the player's attention span at a premium, Levine is hardly
fastidious about keeping his scenes exactly the way he wrote
them.

"If you're lucky enough to have collaborators like this, it
makes it a hell of a lot easier to let go," said Levine. "I'll
write a line and they'll try to say it and be like, 'Dude, this
sounds ridiculous.' We have to keep refining it, finding something
that's emotionally truthful."

Baker called the deeply collaborative nature of
the BioShock Infinite recordings an actor's dream
gig.

"There are times when it's like, 'We need to sit and camp on
this line and this specific scene because we know we don't have it
ironed out yet,'" he said. "And it spoils us, because then you go
back into the status quo gigs, and it's like, 'This isn't as
fun.'"